"My friend, be reasonable!" pleaded Antonio, holding the arm of Janoc, who made more show of tearing himself free than he made real effort—with that melodramatic excess of gesture to which the Latin races are prone. "Be reasonable! Oh, she is wiser than you! She has hidden herself from you because she realizes the danger of being seen near you even in the dark. Be sure that she has longed to see you as keenly as you hunger to see her; but she feels that there must be no meeting with so many spying eyes in the world——"
"Let them spy! but they shall not keep me from the embrace of one whom I love, of one who has suffered," said Janoc, covering his face. "Oh, when I think of your cruelty—you who all the time knew where she was and did not tell me!"
"I confess it, but I acted for the best," said Antonio. "She wrote to me three days after the murder, so that she might have news of you. I met her, and received from her that bit of lace from the actress's dress which I put into Osborne's bag at Tormouth, to throw still more doubt upon him. But she implored me not to reveal to you where she was, lest, if you should be seen with her, suspicion of the murder should fall upon you——"
"Her heart's goodness! My sister! My little one!" exclaimed Janoc.
"Only be patient!" wooed Antonio—"do not go to her. Soon she will make her escape to France, and you also, and then you will embrace the one the other. And now you have no longer cause for much anxiety as to her capture, for the dagger cannot be found with her, since it lies safe in your room in your own keeping, and to-night you will drop it into the river, where it will be buried forever. Do not go to her——"
These were the last words of the dialogue that Clarke heard, for the tidings that "the dagger" was in Janoc's room sent him creeping away through the bushes. He was soon over the railings and in a cab, making for Soho; and behind him in another cab went Furneaux, whose driver, looking at his fare's attire, had said, "Pay first, and then I'll take you."
Clarke, for his part, had no difficulty in entering Janoc's room with his skeleton-keys—indeed, he had been there before! Nor was there any difficulty in finding the dagger. There it lay, with another, in the narrow cardboard box into which Rosalind had put both weapons on finding them behind the shelf of books in Pauline's room.
Clarke's eyes, as they fell at last upon that Saracen blade which he knew so well without ever having seen it, pored, gloated over it, with a glitter in them.
He relocked the trunk, relocked the door, and with the box held fast, ran down the three stairs to his cab—feeling himself a made man, a head taller than all Scotland Yard that night. He put his precious find on the interior front seat of the cab—a four-wheeler; for in his eagerness he had jumped into the first wheeled thing that he had seen, and, having lodged the box inside, being anxious to hide it, he made a step forward toward the driver, to tell him whither he had now to drive. Then he entered, shut the door, and, as the vehicle drove off, put out his hand to the box to feast his eyes on its contents again. But the box was gone—no daggers were there!
"Stop!" howled Clarke.